


Cupid's Hit

by ethereal_xo, Tpants



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, First Meetings, M/M, Meet-Cute, Musician Remus Lupin, Wolfstar Big Bang 2019, Youtuber AU, prankster sirius black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 20:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19048027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ethereal_xo/pseuds/ethereal_xo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tpants/pseuds/Tpants
Summary: "Remus didn’t know what he was thinking when he took this man out of the crowd. He could have been anyone, really. But he saw him there, in the middle of the crowd, with a look on his face like he wanted to murder someone. He felt sorry for him. So he intervened.It wasn’t because the same lad was possibly the most attractive specimen that Remus had seen in his life. No, never. Not in the slightest. Not a chance."





	Cupid's Hit

**Author's Note:**

> So you may notice that this is quite short for a Big Bang. This is mainly because I had college exams the majority of the time that this Big Bang was on, and I had to write this in about two or three days - so 10k wasn't an option. I have never been as stressed in my life, I have to say! I'll probably come back and rewrite this.
> 
> Thank you Arty for creating the adorable art that inspired this. Thank you to the mods for being so understanding with me during this process. And readers, enjoy!  
> 

 “I still don’t understand why you wanted me to come with you to this,” Remus murmured, following Lily into the convention centre. He’d not wanted to leave the house today – in fact, he’d not wanted to go anywhere. Yet Lily had insisted, and god knows he could never refuse his best friend when it came to just about anything.

“I told you, I wanted to come and meet a few people,” Lily said, smiling and linking her arm with his. “You were my ticket in.”

“I do music covers, that’s hardly worthy of entry to this…con.”

“Yeah well it worked, so I’m not going to complain. Besides –” she paused and gave his arm a squeeze – “ you hardly have a million subscribers for nothing, Lupin.”

“Well I know that but…” Remus trailed off, taking in the huge room in front of them. Well, it wasn’t really that big, but it seemed to be with the amount of people that were milling around. It was dimly lit with soft neon lights, with tables of food, drink and activities scattered along the floor. He followed Lily across the room, his eyes drawn to all the colours and sounds, all the while fiddling with the strap of his guitar case. In this unfamiliar environment, the weight of the case on his back was reassuring in a way that nothing else could be.

Lily stopped in front of a massive crimson noticeboard, one that took up a whole section of a wall. _‘Vidcon: London’_ was emblazoned on the very top of it in neon yellow paint, so bright that it burned his eyes a bit. He focused on what Lily was looking at instead, noticing the list she was skimming with her finger. It landed on one line and Remus leaned in close to read it. _Prankception with the Marauding Maniacs, Room 1997A._

 _Marauding Maniacs_ …well, he’d know that name anywhere. Remus stared at her for a moment and then laughed. “You just wanted to see James, didn’t you?”

Lily flushed. “Well, maybe. But I wanted you to meet him too!”

“Hmm,” Remus murmured, smirking. Lily had been dating James Potter for about three months now, and somehow between everything Remus had not had the pleasure of meeting him. He knew that James had a prank channel with some other fella – Black? He wasn’t sure – but out of respect for Lily he hadn’t pried into his channel. No matter how much he wanted to do so. No matter how tempted he was. “I figured that you had an ulterior motive.”

Lily smacked his chest and he laughed again, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “I’m only teasing, Lils. I’d love to meet this James…give him a grilling.”

“Rem, no!”

“Rem, yes! Otherwise you’ll be making out with him in front of me and I do _not_ need to see that.”

“No I won’t!”

“Like I haven’t heard you two on your video chats through the wall.” Remus proceeded to make loud kissing noises near her ear.

Lily squawked and shoved him away. “Stop it! Let’s just go, alright?”

 

 

“If you spend one more minute of today on that phone watching videos, I may lose faith in our friendship.” James whinged. He tugged gently on Sirius’ earbud cable and huffed.

Sirius growled and smacked him away. “I can do whatever I want, Jamie. God knows my phone can be more interesting than you any day.”

“Oi! Feelings!”

Sirius rolled his eyes and shut off his phone. “You’ll live.”

He guessed that he might not be in the best of forms today. It wasn’t entirely unreasonable however. One, he stressed out about himself and James doing their first live show ever today. Two, he’d just been subjected to dinner with his family the following day, an event that he knew would be used by his wonderful mother to critique his life choices. She had always loved to do that, from the moment he came out to his family years earlier.

It hadn’t helped when he’d decided to start playing pranks with James either. They’d met in secondary school, and they’d got on immediately. Both were mischievous and both needed an outlet for that mischief. After they’d gotten a bit of attention for it (both good and bad) they’d started to upload skits and pranks onto the internet. That led to their channel on YouTube, and it spiralled from there. Sirius loved it, but it did make his mother disapprove more of his daily activities. It was a good thing that he was moving out soon.

Until then, he needed an escape. That was it. He just needed to escape his life and his head for a little while.

He turned to speak to James and found that he had abandoned him in favour of talking to a few of the security guards at the back of the room. He sighed and decided to go back to what he was doing to begin with, before he was rudely interrupted by his very rude friend.

His escape of choice was, surprisingly, YouTube. But not his own channel. He’d stumbled across the videos of a guy, about his age, who did covers of various songs. He knew some and he didn’t know others. But the songs themselves didn’t really matter. It was the boy’s voice that he was really taken by. It was soft, lilting and husky at times. In other words, it was beautiful. His voice was the only thing that could relax him with all that was going on right now. He was such a sweetheart too, with his adorable Welsh accent and his adorable face and adorable everything.

Sirius may have a weakness for this boy. Remus Lupin.

He started to watch another video, earbuds in and turned up so that he didn’t have to listen to any of the noise outside his little bubble. And if he decided to ignore James for a bit in favour of enjoying his videos, then that was his business.

 

The area that the con took up in the convention centre was obviously bigger than the room in which they first entered. But Remus was not prepared for exactly how much of the building was being used, or how hard it would be to find different rooms. After wandering for ages with no end in sight, Remus had enough.

“I’m pretty sure that you have no idea where you’re going, Evans.”

“I know exactly where I’m going,” Lily said. She had been short with him for the past five minutes, which told him that a) she was stressed and b) she was lying, they were definitely lost. Remus should have known really, Lily never had any sense of direction.

He tried looking around to see if he could find any sign of the room they were looking for, but there was absolutely no sign of it anywhere. In fact, there was no idea of any kind of room that seemed like it was part of the con. He started to wonder if somehow she had managed to led them into an area they weren’t even meant to be in.

“I’m going to see if it’s down the next hallway, alright, Lil?”

She murmured a reply but didn’t say anything more. Well not to him anyway. She opened her phone up and started mumbling to herself, her tone sharp and angry. He tried to get her attention to no avail. It was no use, she was in a world of her own.

 Lily was still talking to herself when Remus eventually wandered off to see if he could find the room they were looking for. He left her a text message instead of trying to tell her where he was going, because he knew that she wouldn’t absorb anything that he said. And it was then that he found himself sandwiched in a large crowd of people. Lost, and alone.

_Shit._

 

“James?” Sirius pulled out his earbuds after watching a few videos of Remus singing. “Do you know if there’s a bog anywhere around?”

“Uh…I think I saw one down the hall when we were walking in here.”

Sirius nodded and left his phone and earphones onto the table in front of him. Then he stood and stretched. “I’m going to have to go for a bit, I’ll be back in a minute.”

James waved him off, too busy fixing the sound for their live bit to take much heed he assumed. He didn’t mind James taking the lead on this right now, not when his bladder was begging for mercy.

He sprinted out of the room and weaved through the groups of people that were beginning to build outside the room. He didn’t stop until he came into the bathroom. Once he relieved himself and freshened up, he exited again to find that a crowd had materialised nearby. Once he came out, they made a beeline for him.

He wasn’t used to be recognised that much. It wasn’t as if the channel he and James ran had transformed them into household names or anything. So while he should not have been surprised that some people in a convention for his specific line of work recognised him, he was very taken aback indeed. A small group of girls came asking for autographs and selfies, then another group and another, and another. It wasn’t long before Sirius found himself absolutely swarmed by people, and he couldn’t find a way out. He didn’t like crowds at the best of times, but he really didn’t like it this time and he wanted out. He needed out. He reached down for his phone to call James and realised to his horror that he had left the blasted thing back on the stage. They just kept coming and coming and there seemed to be no one around who could help him escape and get back to the room he was meant to be in right now.

Then, out of the blue, he felt someone grab him from behind and bring him into a tiny dark room. He heard the door shut and lock. The noises muffled and the people were gone. Panicked, he started to attack the strange person that had taken hold of him, and the arms that gripped his torso immediately released him.

“Ow! Jesus, mate, I was doing you a favour!”

Sirius stopped in his tracks. He knew that voice. He couldn’t automatically place it. His head was spinning, reeling from some kind of whiplash. He turned quickly to face the owner of the voice and banged his head for his troubles. Before he could actually lay eyes on him, the room spun and faded into black.

 

He woke to find himself lying on the ground, his cheek pressed to rough and brittle fibres. Carpet? Pain blossomed in the back of his skull the moment he opened his eyes and started to blink. Something wet touched the same area, something that stung, and he hissed audibly.

“Sorry, sorry,” a voice murmured. Something else touched it this time, soft and gentler than the previous thing. “You took a nasty bang there, I’m just patching it up.”

Sirius furrowed his brow, trying to remember when he could have taken a bang like that to the head. He had left James, then he had gotten to the bathroom, and then –

He shot up, limbs flailing. His eyes darted around the room. It was tiny and dim. It was then that the events leading up to this flooded back in a rush.

“Calm down!” The voice spoke again. Hands gripped his arms and Sirius let them take his weight for his body was protesting his sudden movement. His head especially, it was throbbing.

Sirius turned to face the owner of the voice. His eyes widened in surprise. He _knew_ that he had recognised that voice before. Because he recognised the man it belonged to as well. It was the same person that he had been watching on his phone this morning, the same voice that he’d had stuck in his head for the past week, comforting him when the rough times seemed to be all too much to handle. “You’re Remus Lupin.”

Remus blinked and sighed, a little smile curling his lips. “Yeah, that’s me.” He felt a hand press the side of his head. “I didn’t realise I was so well-known.”

“Are you kidding? You’re amazing! You have the voice of an – ” Sirius stopped himself, biting his lip. Usually he had a good control on his tongue, but seemingly in his one time of need it had abandoned him and decided to make him say things he would rather stayed inside his head.

If Remus was surprised, he didn’t let on. He just chuckled a little and pressed his hand a little more firmly to the side of his head.

 

Remus didn’t know what he was thinking when he took this man out of the crowd. He could have been anyone, really. But he saw him there, in the middle of the crowd, with a look on his face like he wanted to murder someone. He felt sorry for him. So he intervened.

It wasn’t because the same lad was possibly the most attractive specimen that Remus had seen in his life. No, never. Not in the slightest. Not a chance.

But now he was in this room with a man that looked dazed, having just patched up the side of his head best as he could. It wasn’t bad, just a little bruised, but Remus was worried nonetheless. He wasn’t the most knowledgeable in the medical field. He would much prefer being able to get him out of here so a doctor could look at him.

“You know, I feel a little weird with you knowing my name and my not knowing yours,” he said. “What is your name?”

“Sirius. Sirius Black.”

Remus felt his eyes widen. “You don’t happen to know a James Potter, do you?”

Sirius gave him a dopey smile. “Yeah, I do actually. He’s my best mate. We have a channel –”

“Yeah, I know.” Remus started to laugh. He settled down beside Sirius, continuing hold a bandage with a gentle pressure on the side of his head. “Your mate is dating my roommate, Lily.”

Sirius stared at him for a moment. “You don’t say.”

Remus nodded, and Sirius continued to stare at him. Remus started to feel a little uncomfortable under his gaze, he had to admit. He’d never been seriously involved with anyone before, not romantically. But he knew that Sirius’ gaze reminded him enough of the lustful gazes that people sent each other in the romantic comedies that Lily loved to watch.

Concussion. He must have a concussion. Right. He was going to get help, wasn’t he?

He pulled out his phone and tried to call Lily for help. The tone dialled out and he looked down to see that he had no cell service. That idea was gone down the drain.

He pursed his lips, and then took a hold of Sirius’ hand, guiding it to hold the bandage. “Hold that for a second for me.” Moving his guitar case from where he had dumped it earlier, Remus stood and took a hold of the door handle. He started to turn and pull it, finding it stuck fast. In a panic, he started to pull and tug at the handle. It rattled loudly and the door shook but it still did not budge. He shook it even more aggressively and the handle came off completely, the screws that were holding it in place tumbling to the door with a dull thud. Remus closed his eyes in frustration and leaned his head against the door.

“We’re locked in.”

 

“So you’re telling me that Sirius has vanished?”

“Well…no, what I’m saying is that Sirius went to the bathroom about an hour ago and he hasn’t come back yet.”

“But you couldn’t find him.”

“No, but –”

“And you have no way of contacting him either.”

Glancing down at Sirius’ abandoned phone, James sighed. “No, I don’t.”

The organiser – James had been too busy being yelled at to catch his name – clenched his jaw and shook his head. “You know what? The show starts in twenty minutes. If you don’t find your partner in crime before then, I’m going to have to cancel this.” He started to walk to the very back of the stage. “Get moving, James.”

James waited until he left before he put his head in his hands. This was not like Sirius, to just disappear. He didn’t want to admit even to himself that Sirius could have vanished. He wasn’t even gone that long. He just went to the bathroom for God’s sake. But he had gone looking and he couldn’t find him. And there was the fact that he hadn’t returned in over an hour…

“James?”

James turned and saw Lily standing by the curtain. He never thought that he would be so happy to see someone in his life. He raced over and hugged her tightly. “Oh my god, I didn’t know that you would be here!”

Lily laughed in his ear and kissed the lobe gently. “I thought that I would surprise you. Well, that was the plan anyway before Remus disappeared on me.”

James blinked a few times. “Remus… you lost your friend too?”

“What do you mean t- wait you lost Sirius?”

“He went off an hour ago and he hasn’t come back yet.” James bit his lip and pulled away from her. “I’m starting to get worried if I’m honest, he’s not usually this late.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Lily said, rubbing his chest. “But since the show is going to be starting soon…why don’t we go looking for him? And then you can help me find Remus.”

James nodded. “Deal.”

 

Sirius glanced at Remus, trying to ignore the dull ache in the side of his head. Remus had been trying for ages to figure out a way to open the door. There was nothing in the small room that could help them, all that was in here was a bunch of cleaning supplies and a half empty first-aid kit. Slamming the door with his shoulder hadn’t worked, trying to pick the lock from the inside hadn’t worked either. Out of ideas and options, they had taken to sitting and resting for a while until one of them thought of a new plan. Sirius knew that Remus wasn’t too keen on this idea just from the way he was fidgeting constantly but he couldn’t see any other option.

“I really hope we can figure a way out soon,” Remus said quietly. “I think you should be seen by  a doctor, go to hospital. It wasn’t a bad bang but I don’t know what kind of damage it could have done to you. I’d much rather that you were seen to.”

“I don’t like hospitals,” Sirius whispered. “Bad memories.” His mind flashed back to the day his little brother Regulus was brought into the local hospital, his face torn and bruised from their mother’s latest rampage. He’d looked so small and frail in the bed, his voice so weak. Sirius wasn’t there to protect him. Ever since then he’d not been able to set foot in a hospital without thinking of his little brother, or without feeling sick to the stomach.

“I understand that. My parents both passed away in hospital when I was 18. Cancer. Three months between them.” Remus shrugged, but Sirius knew instinctively that it hurt Remus more than he was letting on. He remembered watching a video that Remus had put out, explaining why he never wrote songs of his own. The story he told in that video hit Sirius more than he wanted to let on, especially with the man himself in front of him. But he could remember it vividly.

_“I don’t write my own songs because everything I would have to write about would be too personal and too painful for me to deal with right now. It’s something I think I would like to do at some point in the future but I don’t know when. It may never happen so I’m not making any promises. But if I do, you’ll be the first to know.”_

He’d gotten the impression from that video that Remus kept many things close to his chest, that he didn’t like to speak about his personal life all that much. Yet here he was, telling Sirius something that he wouldn’t have wanted to talk about otherwise. Maybe he was just saying it because he wanted to make small talk, like the little voice in his head was trying to convince him was the case. But Sirius wanted to believe that Remus had told him because he was in enough comfort to share something with him. Someone he had just met. Someone who may have a major crush on him.

It was harder to deny the crush with Remus sitting in front of him, with his green eyes and sweet half-smile.

“Would you sing to me?”

Remus looked over and held his gaze for a moment, tilting his head. Sirius would have dearly loved to know what Remus was thinking about in that moment. Was he nervous, like he was? Did he feel the same way Sirius did about him? Was this connection he had been feeling for the whole time they had been stuck in this tiny broom cupboard of a room just a part of his wild imagination? Or did Remus feel it too, tingling the air and tantalising his senses just like it did for Sirius?

Whether he did or not was not something that Sirius would get an answer to. Because at that point, Remus nodded silently and reached over to get his guitar. He unzipped the case slowly and took it out. He then started to strum, his fingers delicately plucking the strings with the mastery of an expert. Then, he started to sing.

_“It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside…”_

Sirius loved this song. It was one of his favourite of Remus’ covers, because he sang it with such meaning and purpose. He even preferred it to Elton John’s original.

 _“I know it's not much but it's the best I can do…my gift is my song and this one's for you…_ ”

Whatever Sirius said about the videos of Remus singing, it all paled in comparison to the live version. Up this close, he could see the tendons and veins in his arms tighten as he changed chords on the guitar. He could hear the huskiness of his unedited voice, watch the curls on his head bob as Remus lost himself in the music. His battered Converse pressed against the door, his long legs bent in an arch over Sirius’.

He didn’t realise that he was staring until Remus stopped singing, fixing him with a funny look. Sirius found his face heating up and he looked away.

He then felt Remus’ hand on his cheek. The palm was surprisingly soft against his skin, with rough calluses on the tips of his fingers. He glanced back and saw that Remus had moved closer. There was a gentleness in his eyes, one that Sirius revelled in.

Out of the blue, the door opened with a bang and a creak. The sudden bright light made them both squint. Sirius blinked a few times to clear the black spots that had suddenly started dancing in front of his eyes. He was soon able to make out the familiar figure of James Potter, along with a shorter, slimmer figure that he had never seen before.

“Well,” James began, smirking, “fancy seeing you two here.”

Sirius glanced over at Remus and noticed that he had started to turn red. He tried very hard not to stare at him, no matter how adorable it looked.

“We got a little stuck,” Remus muttered. His hand was still on his calf, stroking up and down. Sirius felt more at peace focusing on that movement, focusing on this moment, than he had in a long while. They continued to talk while Sirius faded in and out of focus, his head beginning to throb once more.

“How did you find us?”

“That’s not important, what is it that – what happened to your head?” James said suddenly, jolting Sirius back into awareness.

“Oh I…I banged it a little…”

“A little? Jesus Christ mate…”

“I patched it up as much as I could but I really think he should get checked out at a hospital.” Remus’ hand squeezed Sirius’ knee and smiled at him, and suddenly he wasn’t that worried about the idea of being in hospital after all.

 

“You know, I’m really happy that I get to spend more time with you and all that,” Sirius murmured, “but I have to admit – this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Remus snorted. “Well you shouldn’t have gone and banged your bloody head then, should you?"

Sirius chuckled. He’d been bedridden in hospital for a few days now. He had gotten a minor concussion and a little cut on the back of his head, but nothing that a few days in a hospital bed couldn’t fix. And nothing that Remus Lupin couldn’t soothe with serenading and many, many laughs.

He was sitting there now, in a chair beside his bed, eating the pot of creamed rice pudding that Sirius had turned his nose up at – _it’s disgusting, Remus! I’m not eating that!_ – his legs crossed and rested on the mattress by Sirius’ waist. His guitar was resting at the foot of the bed. He’d been here since the moment that Sirius was admitted, sleeping on a bunk bed on the floor and watching over him during the day.

He settled back into the pillows and reached out his hand. Remus smiled and leaned forward to take it, rubbing his thumb over his knuckles. He started to sing softly, soothing Sirius back into a restful and peaceful slumber.

Remus was here for him. Remus _cared_. And that, at the end of it all, is what mattered the most.

_“And you can tell everybody, this is your song…it may be quite simple but, now that it’s done…I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind, that I’ve put down in words…how wonderful life is, now you’re in the world…”_


End file.
